This was the week in which Americans hoped they would get straight talk and clear thinking on Iraq. What they got was two exhausting days of Congressional testimony by the American military commander, hours of news conferences and interviews, clouds of cu

The secret allure and the greatness of literature, the secret that sends us to it over and over again, with enthusiasm and a longing to find refuge and meaning, is that literature can repeatedly redeem for us the tragedy of the one from the statistics of

Robert Draper was granted extraordinary access when he was writing his book about US president George Bush. And the details he reveals – such as the strict routines and obsessive exercise – are now the talk of Washington